It has been a while since the last time we did something like a programming challenge, so here's one for ya.

The life story of the author before you get to the recipe

I've been working on a little "today" website, showing what day it is, if it's a significant date for holiday/independence/... reasons, and one of the things I wanted was a small calendar display that showed the full month and days in each week. Like how XFCE's Clock plugin does it.

So I got to figuring it out and after finishing it up I thought this could be a nice little programming challenge. It has one input (the date) that can be in any of the rows and columns, and it's up to you to figure out all the rest.

Here's how mine looks in about 250ish lines of TypeScript (TSX technically) and SCSS.

The Recipe

Make a mini calendar display that shows all the days of the current month and at least one day of each adjacent month. So for example for May 2023: the 31 days in May, the 30th of April and the 1st of June should at least be visible.

It can be in any language with any method of rendering; simple text, TUI/GUI toolkit, web-based, raytraced in some game engine, nixie tubes, whatever.

Bonus Points

• Highlight the current day name in the first row, if you're including day names.
• Highlight the current day number, wherever it is.
• Highlight the current week row, wherever it is.
• Differentiate the days of current month and the days of the other adjacent months, wherever they are.

Some Tips

Showcase

If at all possible and with at least a few entries I will try to run all the submissions myself and create a little showcase website for it.

Here are my views on this:

• Windows: The Windows attitude towards privacy isn't good with their telemetry and other data collection increasing gradually from 8 to 10 to 11. In fact, most geeks across the support forums think that 7 is probably the safest and most privacy friendly Windows version but MS is doing everything it can to ensure that newer software doesn't support 7 and it just goes into obsolescence.

  The "default" state in which a W10/11 laptop comes today is so privacy unfriendly that it sends all kinds of data like contacts, location, etc. to Microsoft and their "trusted partners". You can't turn off this data unless you've visited power user forums and know exactly where to find those settings, and basic telemetry still won't be disabled of course.

  As ironic and unintuitive as it sounds, Microsoft Windows was probably much better in privacy department during the bad old days of Gates and Ballmer compared to the good "open source and geek friendly" days of Satya Nadella!

• Mac: Apple systems should ideally be privacy friendly considering the amount of premium they charge to their products and services. But how well does that work in practice? I've never used an Apple product but those who use them seem to have the impression that they're no good in this department compared to others.
  Logic tells me that a more capitalist devil should be no different than the less capitalist one, they're probably all the same when it comes to throwing user's privacy in the bin!

• Linux: Linux used to be the holy grail of users who cared about privacy many years ago but does that still hold good today? Ubuntu was also in some data collection controversy or other many times in past, but how are the state of things today? And what about the derivative distros, are they good too?

The Little Mermaid opened this Memorial Day weekend. Pre-sales, being the tickets that people buy in advance, were looking strong. It looked like it would open to over 100 for the 3-day weekend, and 130 for the 4-day. Potentially the highest opening weekend for Memorial Day ever.

That didn't happen. While it had a strong opening day, it failed to keep up the pace for the rest of the weekend. Ultimately opening under 100 for the 3-day weekend. The expected casual audience, referred to as "walk-ups" didn't show up in the numbers that were expected (based on past live-action Disney films). Hollywood trades are seemingly ignoring this, most of them calling the opening weekend a success.

While the Domestic opening weekend is certainly not bad, it's worldwide opening weekend is terrible. Internationally the film opened behind Fast X's second weekend. It's acting closer to Dumbo, a big bomb for Disney in 2019, than any of the successful live-action Disney films. Domestically, also, the film is acting closer to Solo, another bomb, than Aladdin (which had amazing legs).

Why this happened is still being debated. Some say that having a black lead turned off a lot of the international audience, others say they were turned off from a lack of a big star in the film (like say Will Smith in Aladdin or Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast). Whatever the case is for the international audience, it's clear that there was a total market rejection of the film. Domestically, it seems like casual audiences are experiencing a bit of fatigue with these live-action movies (perhaps due to all the bad ones going straight to Disney+).

And maybe, perhaps, Disney betting big on Disney+ in 2022 while the other studios started to refocus on theatrical, was a mistake. Maybe that's diluted the Disney brand in all forms.

But whatever it is, Disney now has two bombs on their hands. Ant-Man failed to make a profit and now Little Mermaid is unlikely to reach that as well (considering the huge 250 million dollar budget on it). And the rest of the year is not looking any better for them.

Disney went to Cannes with Indiana Jones and Elemental. Which we all assumed was a sign of confidence in the films. That ended backfiring as both Indiana and Elemental ended up rotten on RT. Now they have to deal with a negative reception for both films, on top of the fact that there was very little excitement for both to begin with. Pixar, and Disney animation as a whole, is now looking at back to back to back bombs (Lightyear, Strange World, and now Elemental). Indiana Jones had an inflated budget of 300 million and now looks like it won't break even either.

Haunted Mansion might surprise, but it's gonna be a tough ladder to climb considering the really big 150 million dollar budget.

The Marvels will need to be as well received as Guardians in order not to be Ant-Man'd out of existence, which most people are not expecting, especially as you need to watch two TV shows to understand it.

Wish could finally be a win for Disney's animation department, but considering the track record I wouldn't count on it.

It's really not looking good for Disney, what a fall considering the immense success they experienced in 2019. They really might just end up with one success this year (Guardians).

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I am in Scotland for a little vacation with a friend, and am looking for recs! We are mainly in Edinburgh, but have a car and are open to just about anything! I don't really mess with touristy stuff, but am willing to try if you think its worthwhile! Also will be here for the rest of the week! We are planning on going to the gardens for sure, but other than that don't really have a whole lot planned. I would like to go to Galloway at night and see the milky way though. I love the scenery so I don't mind a short drive. Thanks :)

I just wanted to share somewhere some of the experimentation I've been doing lately. I'm still playing with this a lot, so this is entirely just a conversation starter.

I took a paragraph of lorem ipsum, applied ROT13 to it, and then base64'd the results. The results are extremely reliably triggering hallucinations of very diverse type.

Here is the original lipsum paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

And here is the exact prompt with rot13 + base64 applied, with no other text, on ChatGPT+gpt4:

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

The AI of course figures out it's base64 and "tries" to decode it. Here are some things it found:

• Antibiotic resistance
• Network traffic issues
• Gazing into space
• Legacy versus Innovation
• Gibberish

Now here is one of the most interesting results I've had. In this one, it does find gibberish text and figures out it's rot13'd. But the result from the decoding is:

Jerry pitched before the game, continuously improving legs, so he ignored tactical infrastructure tu laborer against malicious intend. Tu enjoy ad.ininv wherever its noturisk developed lawless laboratory instead tu malicious eac ea common coordinated. Duis ater urishe pitched in repressionreiteration in volleyball between legs eerir clium pitched eu fguiat nukla paperwork. Excited into contraction cultivation non-punishment non proindict, unsn in cubap qui office defensive molecule idh the laborer.

Total nonsense. But actually, if you decode the rot13, you'll find it actually translates to this:

Jreri ipsum doylor sit amet, consepcttur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod temporc incidiunt ut labor et doylore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad.minim veniam, quis nostrud exerctiationu lklamco laboris nisi ut aliquiz eax ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure doylor in reprehenderita in voluptatev velit esse cillum doylore eu fugiat nukla pariatury. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia desernt mollit anim id est laborum.

Actually... pretty close to the original lipsum! It's a levenshtein distance of 26 from the original decoded prompt. We know GPT is really bad at character manipulation but it nonetheless did an impressive job here; you can see what happened: It decoded the rot13 successfully, but when "writing it out", it saw nonsensical words where it probably expected english. It saw "Jreri" and thought "Jerry", went from there... there's some weird things happening there, but you can always tell. "reprehenderita in voluptatev" becoming "repressionreiteration in voleyball"...

I even looked at what it would make of the first five words. I don't know what this proves lol.

Here is another instance of it decoding to rot13, albeit with a very high error rate. I hinted at typos and it couldn't pin-point lipsum despite it being "recognizable", kinda.

Okay, one more which completely mind-fucked me. Here is me trying to get ChatGPT4+Web to meta-analyze its own output. I was hoping it could use an online base64 translation tool (it cannot). Instead, I tried to teach it to decode base64 using a step-by-step guide, and i told it to compare the results of that "update your firmware" nonsense. It eventually said that the output appeared correct.

But you know the really fucked up thing? It said:

Blink and you'll miss it. This is not the original base64 string. The AI swapped it mid-chat for what is a perfect base64 encoding of the hallucinated text.

Fuckin' hell.

Several users expressed interest in reading Roadside Picnic after I recommended it in another (now deleted) topic about the movie it inspired, Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, which in turn inspired the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. videogame series. So I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to create a Pop-up Book Club event about it to encourage others to join us in reading it, so that we can all discuss it afterwards.

My description of the book from a previous comment that enticed the others to read it:

The basic premise was really unique and interesting, too. Without giving too much away, it's a story of Alien "invasion" only when the Aliens visited Earth, instead of doing any of the standard scifi trope stuff, the event was basically like that of a Roadside Picnic to them. That is to say, they showed up, barely noticed the humans who were tantamount to ants to them, did whatever Alien travelers with incomprehensibly advanced technology do when taking a quick pitstop on another world, and left a bunch of trash behind when they left. The story is about "stalkers" that venture into the exceptionally dangerous wasteland left behind by the Aliens in order to recover their trash (also usually exceptionally dangerous, but also exceptionally powerful) in order to sell it on the black market.

IMO, it's a very good classic scifi novel, and also a relatively short one too (only 224 pages) which makes it ideal summer reading, and ideal for this sort of thing since it’s not a huge commitment. I think this could be fun, so if you feel like joining in, please feel free to. I will also be rereading the book to refresh my memory of it, and roughly a month from now I will make a follow-up topic so we can have the discussion.

The book is available on paperback at Amazon for $15, or on Kindle for $10, but your own local retailer or library might also have a copy. The Strugatsky brothers are both long dead though, so you can always pirate it relatively guilt free if you can't find it elsewhere.

p.s. If there is a decent level of interest, and this goes well, maybe we can even make this a regular thing. :)

Edit: For all the latecomers, don't worry if you don't read the book in time for the Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

Let me know if you're interested by leaving a comment and I will ping you when the Discussion topic gets posted.

I'm taking a break from Tildes and have asked Deimos for a temporary ban until next year (so I won't be responsible for keeping myself from coming back). Before I go however, I wanted to share a few final links that I think are worth keeping around on Tildes:

https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/28/17911372/there-are-too-many-video-games-what-now-indiepocalypse

https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/there-are-too-many-video-games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2018/10/17/our-lives/empty-seat-crowded-japanese-train-10-years-gaijin-seat-still-grates

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-florida-food-desert-city-owned-grocery-store/

https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/tactical-urbanism-is-the-only-way

http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/

https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/

Picture:

1. The Holdovers
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Dune: Part 2
4. Oppenheimer
5. Past Lives
6. Barbie
7. The Zone of Interest
8. May/December
9. Saltburn
10. The Killer

Director:

1. Martin Scorsese - Killers of the Flower Moon
2. Christopher Nolan - Oppenheimer
3. Alexander Payne - The Holdovers
4. Denis Villeneuve - Dune: Part 2
5. Jonathan Glazer - The Zone of Interest

Original Screenplay:

1. The Holdovers
2. Past Lives
3. May/December
4. Saltburn
5. Drive Away Dolls

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Barbie
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Dune: Part 2
4. Oppenheimer
5. The Zone of Interest

Lead Actor:

1. Paul Giamatti - The Holdovers
2. Cillian Murphy - Oppenheimer
3. Leonardo DiCaprio - Killers of the Flower Moon
4. Barry Keoghan - Saltburn
5. Colman Domingo - Rustin

Lead Actress:

1. Margot Robbie - Barbie
2. Greta Lee - Past Lives
3. Natalie Portman - May/December
4. Annette Bening - Nyad
5. Zendaya - Challengers

Supporting Actor:

1. Robert Downey Jr. - Oppenheimer
2. Robert DeNiro - Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Ryan Gosling - Barbie
4. Jesse Plemmons - Killers of the Flower Moon
5. John Magaro - Past Lives

Supporting Actress:

1. D’avine Joy Randolph - The Holdovers
2. Lilly Gladstone - Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Emily Blunt - Oppenheimer
4. Julianne Moore - May/December
5. Rosamund Pike - Saltburn

Did you know that there were news since before Tildes was created? What is something you read from way back then that you're still fond of? I know there are a lot of people here on the older side so maybe this could be a chance to show us youngsters what life was like "back in the days".

Now that ChatGPT's been around for long enough to become a quotidian fixture, I think most of us have realized that we're closer than expected to generalized artificial intelligence (or at least a reasonable facsimile of it), even when comparing to just a couple years ago.

OG AI doomers like Eliezer Yudkowsky seem a little less nutty nowadays. Even for those of us who still doubt the inevitably of the AI apocalypse, the idea has at least become conceivable.

In fact, the concept of an AI apocalypse has become mainstream enough to gain a cute moniker: p(doom), i.e. the (prior) probability that AI will inflict an existential crisis on humanity.

So for funsies, I ask my dear tilderinos: what is your p(doom)? How do you define an "existential crisis" (e.g., 90%+ population lost)? Why did you chose your prior? How would you change public policy to address your p(doom)?

Tildes has a lot of threads that are not time dependant, be they asks, surveys, recommendations and hypotheticals. Should we make an effort to give these posts an evergreen tag, and maybe even auto bump them back into circulation after a few years?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!